June 2010
Pathology & Laboratory Medicine News Items
Announcements:
- Susan Winandy, Ph.D., First Bucher Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
The Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine is pleased to announce Susan Winandy, Ph.D. as the first Nancy L. R. Bucher Assistant Professor. Dr. Winandy obtained a Bachelor’s of Science degree from the University of Connecticut and a Ph.D. in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Following a post-doctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical school she assumed a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology – Immunology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Dr. Winandy has been active in teaching and has served on several thesis committees as well as being an advisor to several students. Her teaching excellence was recognized by the receipt of the Outstanding Teacher for lectures to medical students in the Immunology section. Dr. Winandy’s research investigates how the molecule Ikaros regulates the immune response. Her work has appeared in top tier journals such as the Journal of Immunology, Journal of Experimental Medicine, and the Journal of Biological Chemistry. More than two dozen peer-reviewed manuscripts have been published by Dr. Winandy in addition to several editorials and book chapters. She has served on study sections for the National Institutes of Health and currently is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Immunology.
The Nancy L.R. Bucher Assistant Professorship in Pathology was named for Nancy Bucher, M.D., Research Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Bucher enjoys an international reputation for her pioneering research on liver regeneration and the growth of cancer cells. She joined the Department 26 years ago and continues to serve as a distinguished member of the faculty. This named Professorship appropriately acknowledges her long-standing contributions to the research mission of the Department. Established with anonymous contributions, the Nancy L. R. Bucher Assistant Professorship Fund in Pathology is a permanently endowed fund, the income of which provides salary and research resources to a junior faculty member for three to five years. The fund also benefits from the generous challenge grant to establish endowed positions throughout the University. The challenge grant was given by former BU Board of Trustees Chair Alan Leventhal and his wife, Sherry, who is Vice Chair of the BUSM Dean’s Advisory Board.
“Professorships are important to the mission of the School of Medicine because they support the research work of biomedical scientists,” said Dean Karen Antman. “They offer BUSM the opportunity to attract highly distinguished researchers.”
- Dr Chris Andry was recently notified that he is a recipient of a Strategic International Partner Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Warwick University, UK. Dr Andry will travel to Warwick to work with a colleague, Dr Rodger Charlton on two areas of mutual interest “Cultural Competency and Care of the Deceased Patient and their Family” and “The Role of the Decedent Affairs Office in Operational Improvement at Boston Medical Center”.
There exist similarities and extreme differences between the USA and the UK regarding management of deceased patients, which makes this field of study particularly interesting. Understanding decisions about death, bereavement and burial, in the context of cultural preferences, is just one example of an opportunity for research that would benefit physicians and health care workers in many countries.
Dr Andry plans to present on behalf of the Decedent Affairs Office Team (Chris Kiriakos and the Off Shift Nurse Managers) that the role of the DAO at Boston Medical Center is to always ensure that whatever processes govern a patient’s care after death, they must always be performed with dignity and with the best interests of the patient and their family at heart.
- Congratulations to this year’s recipients of Henry I. Russek Student Achievement Awards in the Department of Pathology:
- First Prize- Madhumita Jagannathan – Congratulations!~
- Second Prize- Jillian Richmond – Bravo!~
- Honorable Mention- Supraja Narasimhan – Great work!
As described by the founder of the Student Achievement Awards program, Dr. Shelley Russek, Professor of Pharmacology at the Medical School, “…[T]hese Achievement Awards go to students who have distinguished themselves not only as gifted researchers in their mentor’s laboratory but also as dedicated members of their department and/or program.” More information about the Russek Awards can be found at this link <http://www.bumc.bu.edu/gms/achievement-day-2010/>
- June is PhD Qualifying Exams Month! This year June 2nd will be the written part of the exam and June 8th and 9th the oral portion will take place. There are six students who will be taking their qualifying exams this season: Dominic Beal, Atsushi Ebata, Ed Hartsough, Tricia Kao, Ritu Moitra and Sri Srinivasan. The faculty working with this group of candidates is: Drs. Berse, Burke, Murnane, Rahimi, Remick, and Slack. Good Luck to all! Thank you to Dr. Bohdana Burke for all of her hard work coordinating!
- Martin Steffen, PhD will have a feature article profiling his lab’s gene function validation in The Scientist, with an embargo date on May 27. Reporter Jef Akst recently interviewed Martin and his team for a feature news story. A link to this article will be provided next New News issue.
- The Kurosawa Lab welcomes Ms. Ishbel “Bella” Heru as a part-time research technician. Bella is a graduate of BU and comes to us most recently from Brown University with experience in a crystallography lab.
- Congratulations to Besam Khidhir, MD/PhD Candidate who successfully Defended his thesis “Radiologic Localization of Pathologic Lesions Using Image Registration” on May 24th; Besam will be returning to Medical School in June
- Congratulations to Lou Vaickus, MD/PhD Candidate who successfully Defended his thesis “Cockroach Allergens Induce a Biphasic Asthmatic Response” on May 25th; Lou will be returning to Medical School in June
- We are inviting all graduate students to join our New Graduate Student Discussion Board, open to all current and inquiring students about our program. The expectation is that students will pose questions and we will answer (in a timely manner). This will allow, especially inquiring students, to get immediate answers to questions that may not be readily available on our web page or that is unique to him/her. We encourage your input since you are in the trenches and can probably answer many of these questions best!!! We are also welcoming any BUSM or Boston, “Did you know…” items. Please send to dekiley@bu.edu . Feedback about how the Discussion Board is going will be appreciated. Here is the link:
- Graduation Photos
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- Barbara Nikolajczyk, PhD will be sitting on the Special Emphasis Panel for review of NIH Immunology IRG conflicts in July
- Barbara Nikolajczyk, PhD received a Boston Area Diabetes and Endocrinology Research Center Pilot grant entitled, “The role of B cell in mouse model of type 2 diabetes”
- Michael Roehrl, MD; PhD was elected Member of the Executive Committee, Massachusetts Medical Society International Medical Graduate Section (MMS-IMG), Waltham, MA. Term: 2010-2013
- Michael Roehrl, MD; PhD was named Faculty Research Fellow by the Karin Grunebaum Cancer Research Foundation (http://www.grunebaumfoundation.org/); funding for experimental laboratory research, 2010-2011
- Diana Weiner, Lab Tech in the Kurosawa Lab has just been accepted into The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
- Barbara Nikolajczyk’s, PhD R21 entitled “The role of B cells and B cell Toll-like receptors in glucose intolerance” has been selected for funding by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive Disorders
Presentations:
- Dr Chris Andry was an invited speaker at Thermo Scientific Day in April. He gave a seminar on operational improvement in an anatomic pathology laboratory. The presentation focused on a historical retrospective of the Mallory Institute of Pathology, the design of the new laboratory space at 670 Albany Street, the department’s focus and interest in employee and patient safety, and tools to assist with error reduction such as bar coding technology.
- Maria Panchenko, PhD will present a poster at the 75th Symposium: Nuclear Organization & Function meeting in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, June 2-8, 2010 “JADE protein family in the histone acetyl transferase (HAT) HBO1 complex and the cell cycle” by M.V. Panchenko and S. Mitra
- Karen Quillen, MD presented at the Beckman Coulter Scientific Meeting on Sepsis in Barcelona on May 3-4: the work presented was conducted by former residents John Lee, MD (graduating cytology fellow), Sara Koenig, MD, Bethany Tierno, MD, Robert Bagdasaryan, MD and Fernando Chaves, MD; supervised by former faculty DongSheng Xu, MD, PhD. Aside from the residents’ hard work, a certain amount of luck was involved getting to and from Europe in between volcanic ash eruptions
- Carmen Sarita-Reyes, MD and resident Yanelba Toribio, MD has a case of Juvenile Nasopharyngeal Angiofibroma that was accepted for the Slide Survey of the Society of Pediatric Pathology (SSO SPP) 2010.
- John Kim, PhD, Assistant Professor recently visited Korea and made four different presentations:
- “Indoor Allergens, Air Pollutants, and Asthma.” Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul, Korea, May 4, 2010
- “Air Pollution, Oxidative Stress, Asthma, and Anti-oxidant Treatment.” Division of Pulmonology, Gacheon University of Medicine and Sciences, Incheon, Korea. May 6, 2010
- “Cockroach Allergen, Asthma, and Air Pollution.” Department of Biology, Suncheon National University, Suncheon, Korea. May 10, 2010
- “Indoor Allergens, Air Pollutants, and Asthma.” Department of Biological Sciences, Sookmyung University, Seoul, Korea, May 12, 2010
- Several members of the Remick Lab will be presenting individual posters at this year’s SHOCK Society Convention in Portland June 12-15th:
- Brian Japp: “Abundant Protein Depletion Also Dramatically Depletes Target Cytokines”
- Liz Schuller, MA: “Delayed Addition of Dimethyl Sulphoxide Fails to Modulate Cytokine Production in a Human Whole Blood Model”
- Florin Craciun, PhD candidate will present and have a poster: “Pulmonary Consequences of Murine Sepsis: Injury or Just Inflammation”
- A poster presentation based on an innovative method of cadaver biopsy in medical school curriculum has been accepted for discussion at the 2010 John McCahan Medical Campus Education Day. The project was initiated by Dr. Lija Joseph and was supported partially by a grant that she received from the American Society for Investigative Pathology toward developing medical student interest in pathology. Please plan to attend the Medical Education day on June 11th , 2010 by registering at http://www.bu.edu/jmedday/index.htm
Publications-ACCEPTED:
- Barbara Nikolajczyk, PhD has had a publication accepted to Cytokine. Nikolajczyk, BS. 2010. “B cells as unappreciated mediators of human non-autoimmune inflammatory disease.” Cytokine. (In Press)
- Barbara Nikolajczyk, PhD has also had the following article accepted to FEBS Letters. Denis, GV, Nikolajczyk, BS, Schnitzler, G. 2010. “An emerging role for bromodomain-containing proteins in chromatin regulation and transcriptional control of adipogenesis.” FEBS Letters (In Press).
- Zhang Q, Radisalvjevic Z, Siroky M and Azadzoi K: “Dietary Antioxidants Improve Arteriogenic Erectile Dysfunction” has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Andrology
- Aletta Schnitzler, PhD in the Blusztajn Lab just had a paper accepted: Schnitzler AC, Mellott TJ, Lopez-Coviella I, Tallini Y, Kotlikoff M, Follettie M, Blusztajn JK (2010) “BMP9 induces NGF as an autocrine/paracrine cholinergic trophic factor in developing basal forebrain neurons.” J Neurosci In press.
- Michael Roehrl, MD; PhD has a paper accepted: Roehrl, Lantz, Sylvester, Wang. “Age-Dependent Reference Ranges for Automated Assessment of Immature Granulocytes and Clinical Significance in an Outpatient Setting.” Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, 2010, in press. Great example of research with our Community Health partners!